Breathless action, lots of dragons, and chewy themes to boot.
When cyborg dragons threaten Drakopolis, dragon racer Abel must find a way to save both it and them.
As in the series opener, it’s cops vs. criminal gangs both in the sprawling, corrupt city and in 13-year-old Abel’s family, where his older brother, Silas, works for the Dragon’s Eye secret police and his big sister, Lina, is a fugitive member of the politically subversive Sky Knights kin. He himself only wants to train and race dragons—particularly after meeting Brazza, an illegal mixed-breed flyer of touchy disposition and astonishing intelligence. While the plot does indeed feature two breathtaking, high-speed aerial races among the skyscrapers and a massive climactic melee featuring hundreds of maddened dragons with cybernetic enhancements and hacked DNA, it’s more than just a pretext for set piece battles, as London also perceptively explores both the dynamics of a close family beset with conflicting loyalties and issues tied to subjugating and experimenting on wild creatures who don’t talk but can, it turns out, sing and who, in Abel’s view at least, are deserving of freedom. Lighter touches, such as 8-ton Brazza’s fondness for being read to and occasional mentions of an anarchistic kin dubbed the Wind Breakers, leaven the proceedings. The human cast, though it presents largely White, does include one nonbinary supporting character, a boy who has a dragon queen act, and glancing mention of same-sex crushes.
Breathless action, lots of dragons, and chewy themes to boot. (Fantasy. 9-13)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-71657-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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